Angels Abound in Religious Beliefs!
by Kristen Moulton
The Salt Lake Tribune
Angels, those winged creatures atop Christmas trees and a perennial subject for movies, long have captured the human imagination.
But for most religious people, angels are far from imaginary. They are not merely cultural conceptions, symbols or myths.
Indeed, angels play a vital role in the relationship between humans and the divine, according to teachings of the world’s dominant religions.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all believe in angels and share a common notion — that angels do God’s work, including communication with humans. The very word “angel” is from the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for messenger, “mal’ach.”
Many in the New Age movement embrace angels, while Buddhists and Hindus do not, although they believe in a cosmos filled with otherworldly creatures.
Almost every society in history has had stories or scriptures that deal with beings like angels, says Peter Kreeft, a philosophy professor at Boston College who has written extensively about Catholic beliefs, including a book on angels and demons.
“It seems,” Kreeft says, “like the human race innately knows there is something like angels.”
Kreeft probably comes as close to getting it as right as anyone. The human race ‘innately knows’ there is something like angels. Innately is a pretty cagey way of avoiding a head on collision with reality, for there is no other way we can ‘know’ there are angels except ‘innately.’ The science on this is really quite simple: Two plus two makes four and it might as well make angels too.
That this kind of mythology has survived as reality into the 21st century speaks volumes about the inadequacy of the human brain, and that I would speak so candidly and skeptically about angels in Utah shows the inadequacy of my own brain. It would be much smarter to just shut up, chuckle, and mind my own business. So please, just ignore my total disbelief in angels. Somehow or other the angel gene didn’t embed in my brain, but ghosts—they scare me!
While various traditions agree that angels do not have wings — those sprouted from Old Testament stories and medieval artists’ depictions of mobility — beliefs about what angels are and what angels do vary from faith to faith.
Judaism
While angels appear throughout the Hebrew Bible, Conservative, Orthodox and Reform Jews do not dwell on them.
“Our prayers and attention are due to God alone,” explains retired Salt Lake City Rabbi Fred Wenger. “There are those who believe and those who don’t believe.”
Nonetheless, scripture teaches that angels “are all around us,” Wenger says. “They are not human in any way.”
According to Rabbi David Wolpe, writing on Beliefnet, Jewish teachings about angels are ancient, dating back to the first five books of the Bible, the Torah.
Cherubim with flaming swords guarded the gates of Eden after Adam and Eve were banished, and Abraham conversed several times with angels.
“Angels are God’s entourage,” Wolpe writes.
Some medieval Jewish commentators proposed that angels were necessary to perform tasks that were beneath God’s dignity. Others saw them as ways to distance God from certain deeds, such as those performed by the angel of death.
Jewish folklore — later borrowed by Christians — gave names to seven archangels, even though only Michael is called an archangel in Scripture. Each had a particular job, and Michael is chief of the angelic host and guardian of Israel.
Traditional Christianity
For most Christians, angels are created beings of a higher order than humans.
Kreeft puts it this way: “We’re the smartest animal and the stupidest angel.”
Humans share the physical world of animals, he says, and the spiritual dimension with angels.
While popular depictions show them as cuddly cherubs, angels are fearsome, formidable, brilliant creatures who can take the form of adult humans.
The angels, created to worship God, are engaged in a constant battle with demons, who are fallen angels bent on turning away humans from the Almighty.
The Bible is not explicit about the fallen angels’ rejection of God, but there are two traditions in Christianity. One posits that the fallen angels were jealous of humans. The other has them revolt when they learn God’s plan to become a lowly man. In both cases, the fallen angels chose their own will over God’s.
Each human, Kreeft says, has a guardian angel from the moment of conception.
Kaysville resident Kelly Sullivan, a Catholic, says he definitely felt the company of angels, and a guardian angel in particular, when he spent seven months homeless four years ago. He lived outside, along the railroad tracks where he now rides FrontRunner. “I felt comforted. I felt OK.”
Catholics and Orthodox Christians believe in a hierarchy of angels, with those at the top in constant adoration of God and the lowest involved in helping, warning and protecting humans.
Both traditions pray often to angels, asking for their prayers and intercessions before God.
Protestants, on the other hand, do not typically think of angel hierarchies and do not generally pray to angels.
The Rev. Neal Humphrey, pastor of Westminster Church in Fruit Heights, studied angelology in his spare time while in the seminary to become a Presbyterian minister.
He says cherubim and seraphim are “terrible,” in the classic sense of the word, winged creatures rather than angels.
“They are not messengers. They are basically muscle. They guard the throne. They guard the ark of the covenant,” Humphrey says. “We turned them into little naked babies.”
While there is no fixed doctrine of guardian angels among Protestant Christians, Humphrey says, some do believe in them.
LDS
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has one of the more distinct concepts of angels.
Unlike Judaism, Islam and traditional Christianity, which hold that angels are a different species, Mormons teach that angels are humans who have died or who have not yet been born.
“That sets Mormonism apart from most other religions that believe that angels exist,” says Kent Jackson, associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University.
For Latter-day Saints, angels are people on assignment.
“Angel is a job description. It’s not a state of being,” Jackson says.
“They are there to help us or warn us or give us direction,” says Sue Parsell, a Mormon who lives in Kaysville.
Jackson says most Latter-day Saints are not misled by popular depictions of angels on TV or in movies, partly because angels figure so prominently in the church’s foundational stories.
According to LDS doctrine, Moroni, the angel who appeared at church founder Joseph Smith’s bedside, was a Nephite warrior who had lived about 1,400 years earlier and buried the golden plates from which The Book of Mormon was translated.
“That image is so deeply ingrained in Mormon minds,” Jackson says, “that has become for us the image of what an angel is.”
Today, gold-leafed Moroni statues top LDS temples.
Smith also was visited by John the Baptist, Peter, James and John, notes Jackson. “We would call these angels.”
Mormon doctrine holds that the Archangel Michael is Adam. As for Angel Gabriel, who shared news of the impending births of John the Baptist and Jesus with mortals, Smith taught he was Noah.
LDS theology does not teach that each person has a guardian angel, Jackson says, but “there is no reason, from an LDS point of view, why God can’t send unseen angels to help people.”
As in traditional Christianity, demons are fallen angels who went against God.
Islam
For Muslims, belief in angels is an article of faith.
Muhammed Mehtar , imam of the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake, says God created angels as the most superior creatures, but when they became overconfident, he created humans with even greater capacity.
“We can be noble, kind, loving, peaceful,” Mehtar says. “When we do the best of the best, we overrank the angels.”
Angels are each made for a specific purpose, he says, and never question the will of Allah, the Arabic name for God.
An angel may make rain or breathe life into an infant in his mother’s womb. There is an angel of death, Mehtar explains, and each person has two angels, one on each shoulder to give an account of the person’s life at final judgment.
“To say that an angel does as they choose to do has the possibility to jeopardize a person’s fate and bring the Muslim out of the fold of Islam.”
Satan and his demons were in Paradise with the angels, he says, but are of a different species.
Only prophets have access to angels, which are made from a matter called Noor, a special lightlike structure. They can take different forms, Mehtar says, and do so at the will of the Creator.
Angels never should be confused with jinn, a different supernatural being that likes to mess with humans.
Muslims have an Angel Gabriel, as do Christians and Jews. He is a high-ranking angel.
“I cannot say what an angel looks like,” Mehtar says. “That would be demeaning to angels and humans.”
Angels peek out from most every page of scripture
Quran
“Whoever is an enemy to Allah, and His angels, and His Messengers, and Gabriel, and Michael, then surely, Allah is an enemy to such disbelievers.” 2:99
“And we have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than [his] jugular vein. When the two receivers receive, seated on the right and on the left. Man does not utter any word except that with him is an observer prepared [to record].” 50:16-18
Old Testament
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ ” Isaiah 6:1-2
“I looked up and there before me was a man dressed in linen, with a belt of the finest gold around his waist. His body was like chrysolite, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude.” Daniel 10:5-6
New Testament
“In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.’ ” Luke 1:26-28
“Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” Hebrews 1:14
“Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.” Hebrews 13:2
Doctrine & Covenants (LDS)
“But there are no angels who minister to this earth but those who do belong or have belonged to it.” D&C 130:5.
Angels on the big, small screen
The Web site Beliefnet compiled a list of pop-culture angels on television and in film during the angel craze of the 1990s until now. Some are beloved, along the lines of, say, Clarence Oddbody (Angel, Second Class) in the 1946 holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Some, though, are dark angels. The following TV and movie angels, according to Beliefnet, left the most memorable imprints in recent years:
Al, played by Christopher Lloyd in the 1994 film “Angels in the Outfield.”
Monica, played by Roma Downey, Tess by Della Reese and Andrew (The Angel of Death) by John Dye in the TV series “Touched by an Angel,” filmed in Utah and running from 1994-2003.
Archangel Michael, played by John Travolta in the 1996 film “Michael.”
Dudley, played by Denzel Washington in the 1996 film “The Preacher’s Wife.”
Marty DePolo, played by Mike Damus in the TV series “Teen Angel,” 1997-98.
Seth, played by Nicolas Cage in the 1998 film “City of Angels.”
Bartleby, a fallen angel played by Ben Affleck, and Loki, the Angel of Death, played by Matt Damon, in the 1999 film “Dogma.”
Angel, played by Emma Thompson in the 2003 screen version of Tony Kushner’s play “Angels in America.”
Gabriel, played by Tilda Swinton in the 2005 film “Constantine.”
Aaron Corbett, played by Paul Wesley in the 2006 film “Fallen.”
Dangerous woman/Angel Asphodel, played by Virginia Madsen in the 2006 film “Prairie Home Companion.”
Earl, played by Leon Rippy in the 2007 film “Grace.”
Catholic author to deliver Aquinas lecture
Peter Kreeft, a philosophy professor at Boston College, will be speak next month at St. Catherine’s Newman Center adjacent to the University of Utah.
Kreeft, a popular Catholic author who has taught and written about a range of theological and philosophical issues, will speak on “Making Sense Out of Suffering” in the annual Aquinas Lecture.
It will be Jan. 31 at 1 p.m. at the center, 170 S. University St., Salt Lake City.
